


Bombshell

by CobaltStargazer



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Angst, Emotional Discomfort, F/M, Feels, Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-16
Updated: 2014-10-16
Packaged: 2018-02-21 09:10:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2462681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CobaltStargazer/pseuds/CobaltStargazer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some conversations are more difficult than others. This is the most difficult one of all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bombshell

If Spencer was out on a case, she was screwed.

Elle hadn't called in advance, she'd just gotten on a plane and spent the flight looking out the window while the sky turned purple-pink-orange-blue as the sun came up. She rented a car, the last compact the agent had to offer, and made the drive with what felt like live snakes crawling around in her stomach. It had occurred to her that he might be working before she'd left, but she didn't want to take the time to phone him. He was the over-thinker, not her. 

She was relieved at first when she saw his vehicle in its customary spot, and she parked next to it, but then she realized that he could have gotten Morgan to come pick him up if the team had been called into the field. She shook off the notion. If he wasn't here, she could go by the office. If he wasn't _there_ , she'd...she'd think of something.

The hallway leading to his door was silent, and she paused with her hand poised for knocking for a full three minutes. It was almost one in the afternoon. Her eyes were grainy from lack of sleep. Finally, she knocked in a businesslike fashion. The snakes were quiet for the time being.

Spencer was going over some papers related to work, sitting on the couch in his bathrobe. The radio was playing softly. It was Saturday, so he'd tried to sleep in. The sound of knuckles rapping on the solid surface of his door jarred him out of a reverie, and he looked up from the folder in his lap. His stomach tried to climb up into his throat, and he swallowed, as if that would push it back into place. After a minute, he put his work aside and got to his feet. It seemed to take an hour to get to the door. 

"Hey."

She said it very quietly when he opened the door, and he just looked at her. There was a couple of days worth of beard stubble on his jaw, and his eyes looked tired. The silence lingered. His lack of expression had turned her stomach into a ball of ice, but he didn't say anything. Finally, he turned and walked away from the door, further into the apartment. She hovered there uncertainly, then stepped past the threshold and closed the door behind her. The sound of the lock engaging was deafening.

Spencer turned the radio off, moved into the kitchen. His face was still blank. He opened one of the overhead cupboards, took down a mug. His movements were precise, controlled. He started the coffee pot, counting his breaths as he did so.

"I'm working right now, Elle. You should have called first."

She winced, because his voice was blank too. "Yeah, I thought about that on the plane," she said, moving towards the kitchen without entering it. The robe was an old one, comfortable and lived in. She'd worn it herself. She was watching his hands. He wouldn't look at her. "I thought I'd surprise you."

"The surprise is that you're here at all. I've been calling, but you never called me back."

And the truth was, he was so grateful to see her that he wanted to throw up. As time dragged past, he'd imagined her as a captive somewhere, not just in a hospital bed but kidnapped or taken hostage or dead. A repeat of what had happened to Maeve. For her to show up alive, without a scratch, was simultaneously the greatest relief he'd ever known, and the most infuriating thing that could have occurred. Spencer examined the spoon he'd set out for stirring his coffee earlier, opened the dishwasher and dropped it into the silverware basket. He retrieved a clean one from the utensil drawer. The coffee maker was burbling.

"I, uh..."

There was nothing she could say, not really. She'd known she must have been hurting him with her silence, that he'd have been imagining the worst. That she'd been hurt, that someone had done something to her...that she'd just wandered away, continuing the pattern. And having done exactly that once before, she already had one strike against her. Elle was still standing on the threshold of the kitchen, wishing to whatever deity might be listening that he'd just let her have it.

"Spencer, please."

"Please what, Elle?" 

His voice was clipped as he filled his mug, but he didn't even want the coffee anymore. It was something to do with his hands, though. "You went home, and I stopped hearing from you. Cold turkey. For a month. Over a month, technically. I was okay with it at first, because I know you have things going on, but..."

The profiler shook his head, and he looked at her for a second before averting his gaze again. "Maybe I don't have a right to be angry. We're together, but we also have our own lives. I'm here, and you're in New Mexico. Maybe we should have set up some ground rules so I don't worry that you're dead in a ditch when you suddenly stop calling."

That actually warmed the frozen knot in her guts, and she took a hesitant step towards him. He still had his back to her.The mug was in his hands, but he was staring down into it instead of drinking. "I'm tough, remember?" she said, and she watched his shoulders go up and down, a jerky motion. "Takes a lot to kill me." _Or make me run away now that we have each other._

Spencer put the heavy gray mug down with an overly precise motion, turned to face her. She was wearing a black T shirt, an old pair of jeans and tennis shoes without socks. He could see her getting dressed, putting on the very first things that came to hand. Against his will, his mouth quirked the tiniest fraction. 

"Security must have loved you."

"Yeah, they were enthralled."

If she touched him, would he pull away from her? Now that he was looking at her, she could see the hurt in his expression buried underneath the stoicism, and there was something she'd come to tell him. Elle drew in a breath through her nose, pushed it out slowly. Spencer's mouth was a tight line. His hands hung limp at his sides. She carefully grasped one of them, and though he flinched a little he didn't retreat. His expression was still guarded, closed.

He didn't understand it at first when she brought his hand to her abdomen and held it there. Despite his overwhelming intellect, he could also sometimes be utterly clueless. It was one of the reasons she loved him. But as the moment lingered, he flashed back on a time before JJ gave birth to Henry, the blonde agent doing the same thing. Time stopped. _Everything_ stopped.

"Elle..."

"Please don't hate me."

And she only said it because she'd never seen such terror. The block of ice in her guts was back. His hand was still on her stomach, but only because she was holding it there. She'd started to suspect when she spent several mornings hugging the toilet, and when the barfing persisted she'd taken a home test. Her gynecologist confirmed it. She kind of felt like throwing up now, actually, even though she hadn't eaten on the flight. Spencer was utterly still, looking at her with an expression she'd only seen in accident victims. Elle let go of his hand, and he folded his arms tightly across his chest.

"Baby..."

_Baby_.

Absurdly, or perhaps not so absurdly, Spencer was thinking about his mother. What were the odds that Diana's illness would skip another generation? He'd been lucky, and he'd worried over it obsessively until he'd aged past the point when schizophrenia usually manifested. He'd dodged the bullet. Would the new life in the brunette's belly be so fortunate? His mind was whirling.

"How long were you going to wait before you told me?"

"I'd have told you before this, but I didn't know how. We never talked about anything related to any kind of future." She'd put her hands in her pockets to keep from fidgeting. She couldn't stand the way he was looking at her, so she took a step backwards and found something else to focus on.

The break in eye contact hurt him even as it gratified him. The last time someone had kept a secret from him, it had been JJ and Hotch concealing the fact that Emily was alive while he cried on JJ's shoulder. Elle had broken her silence after only a month instead of two. Was that supposed to be a mitigating factor, make him feel better? He looked at her abdomen again. Was he imagining that he could already see a swell in her stomach? His child. _Their_ child.

"What if genetics screws it over?"

She flinched when he said it, and again the mean part of him was pleased even as he wanted to apologize. This was Elle, who he loved, and whatever happened she was going to need support in the coming months. But he couldn't do that right now, give her what she needed. He was too terrified. Not just because of Diana, but because of William. What if his father's cowardice was also genetic? And wasn't this a perfect example of that cowardice, that he was hurting her because she'd walked into his kitchen and dropped a bomb on him after a month of silence?

"Baby, please..." 

Elle hated the pleading note in her voice. She'd never begged in her life, not even when Randall Garner had broken into her house and nearly killed her. But she wanted to beg now, and she hated it. Her spine stiffened as she jammed her hands deeper into her pockets. To keep herself from it. She wasn't going to crawl. Not even for Reid.

"I'm going to ask you to leave now," he said, and his expression was back to being remote. "I need to be alone so I can think."

The silence held, and they stood in tableau as she studied his face. The mouth that could give her such pleasure was a hard line, and his eyes were cool. She shouldn't have waited. She'd known about his mom, and if she was pissing herself over this then his kidneys had to be doing double-duty to hold it back right now. She hated him for it even as she understood it. 

"Okay, Spencer." No more 'baby'. The irony of the endearment was probably a little much to deal with, anyway.

He waited until she left, and then he stumbled into a chair at the kitchen table and put his head in his hands. He was going to be a father. He was going to be a father, and he'd just hurt Elle so badly. The profiler closed his eyes. How could he be so smart and so _stupid_ at the same time?

Out in the hall, Elle was taking deep breaths, but she wasn't crying. Thank God. When she'd composed herself somewhat, she put a hand on her stomach, a hesitant gesture. She wasn't used to it yet. But she could _get_ used to it. If only because the stubborn idiot in there was half responsible for it.

"It's gonna be okay, kid. I'll make it okay, even if I have to do it by myself."


End file.
